The Redskins football team can keep its trademark name and logos, a federal judge ruled this morning, because a group of District activists didn't provide enough evidence that the team's moniker insulted and disparaged a substantial numbers of Native Americans.

The ruling protects millions of dollars in sales of Redskins paraphernalia. With a federal registration for Redskins trademarks, team owner Dan Snyder has exclusive rights to use the team name and logo on T-shirts, caps and other merchandise worth an estimated $ 5 million a year. In her 83-page decision, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly rejected a federal trademark panel's decision in 1999 to cancel six federal trademarks that the owners of the Redskins held. She said that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's appeal board did not base its decision on concrete and timely evidence.

The Native Americans, led by Cheyenne activist and District resident Suzan Shown Harjo, had argued that the team's name and feather-wearing Indian mascot trivialize a tragic time when Indians were victims of genocide and forced off their land by settlers and U.S. soldiers. They cited a 1946 federal law that prohibits the government from registering a trademark that disparages any race, religion or other group.

Hoping to get the team to change its name, Harjo took the legal battle to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 1992, and the Trial Trademark and Appeal Board of that agency sided with her in 1999. But Pro-Football Inc., the corporation that owns the Redskins, appealed the trademark panel's decision in U.S. District Court. Its attorneys said that the "difficult relations" between Anglo-Americans and Native Americans were certainly unfortunate. But, they argued, in the 21st century, the beloved hometown team has changed the connotation of the word "Redskins" to one that is "powerfully positive" -- associated more with touchdowns than tomahawks.

In her opinion today, Kollar-Kotelly said that the trademark board should have been deciding whether the word "redskin," when used with the popular football franchise, disparaged a "substantial composite" of Native Americans at the time the first trademark was registered in 1967. She said that the board relied instead on a 1996 survey of Native Americans' general reactions to the word "redskin" and that the survey was "irrelevant" to the legal question before the board.

But the judge warned that her ruling upholding the Redskins team trademark was not a decision about whether the word "redskin" was insulting or appropriate for Washington's National Football League team -- or any sports team. Instead, she said, the board that considered this test case of sensitive cultural imagery simply didn't have the appropriate evidence to reach the decision it did. She also noted that because activists didn't sue over the trademarks until 1992, they significantly weakened their own legal argument.

"This opinion should not be read as making any statement on the appropriateness of Native American imagery for team names," the judge wrote. "By waiting so long to exercise their rights, Defendants make it difficult for any fact-finder to affirmatively state that in 1967 the trademarks were disparaging."

The team registered its first trademark in 1967 and its sixth in 1990.

The Native Americans seeking the name change were not immediately available for comment today. But in the past, they have indicated they would likely appeal if they lost.

The Fredericksburg Free Lance Star had this little gem in their story about the Skins name -

Interestingly, the "Redskins" name was made official in 1933 when the team, then still in Boston, had an American Indian head coach, William "Lone Star" Dietz. The name, a change from the club's previous moniker, the Boston Braves, was meant to honor Dietz. That part of the story usually seems to get tomahawked by the activists.

Rich in Roanoke
_______________________________________
Let others hail the rising sun:
I bow to that whose course is run